album cover, leonard cohen from 'songs of love and hate', 1971


CHAPTER TWO - Leonard Cohen

WEEK THREE. conversation by clair and aisha

 

3

"I hear that you're building your little house deep in the desert.
You're living for nothing now, I hope you're keeping some kind of record"
lenoard cohen

reading this just reminds me so much of days at college  when i started listening to leonard cohen...the feeling of  the beginning of non child/adult space, and the place i found myself in then...

is it most important to keep records when you feel you're 'living for nothing'?...(its bound to make good songs ;)

and is emotion stronger when life is, (or feels) meaningless?  and so we should write it all down.  my feeling is that we should get practised in writing it all down what ever the weather...kind of a way of freezing feeling, to be revisited later...

clair

Is it possible to write down and document the nothing, the absence of
things and happenings. ‘You are living for nothing now…’, were we ever
living for anything else than nothing? Just the illusion of something.

Was it only of our creation that everything felt so purposeful and driven.
Like an empty room which feels too stark, only echo and a repetition of
emptiness… so we bring in bookcases and meaning in order to furnish our
life because nothing is too loud, like a gaping mouth and no song.

Or is the beginning of nothing the start of possibility and freedom, that
the bonds of spiralling thought are cast off and we are only here, now in
this moment, heart beating, breath in, and then out on a loop.
aisha


exactly, such compulsion to fill it up, to make ourselves at home with cushions, inside and outside.  to cushion the fall.  

maybe she was really living.  maybe she had chosen to live like that.  because it makes experience intensify - without the distraction of comfort, in its many many shades and gowns of texture and colour
clair 

I like the idea of cushions on the inside. To absorb the shock, reduce the
echo and provide somewhere to nest up.

Wondering about recording the now to document and to keep account of the
minutes passing. It feels like writing for a distant future time to give
the current moment dimensions and meaning? Strange speaking for a future
self to recollect and savour the event once is has past and again we come
back to being in the present just for the presence of that moment and no
further end. Is that possible or by using letters and words to encase it
in, it some how becomes an object to be viewed and no longer experienced.
Like you say, good content for songs ...that can then be listened to by
others... needing expresion for the moments they find themselves in.

I like this simple view about writing, "It just takes 26 letters to create
the universe, the word is dismantled and then reassembled through the lens
of a pen and verse." The South African poet Lebo Mashile
Aisha

mmm...imagine if there lived a man in a valley far away from all.  he was born in the valley and when he was very young his mother had to leave him in the hands of the lady birds and butterflies, beetles, ravens and crows, furry rabbits and badgers, foxes and sqirrils, spiders and snails, apple trees and wild strawberry plants.


slowly he grow up and went about his exsistance, no pen, no paper, no other human, just him and the valley and the animals that lived there.


when he slept all the baby bunnies and grown up rabbits slept around his body and close to each other to keep warm and cosy and not alone.


when an animal was ill and slowly died he buried them lovingly in the soil and topped it off with a little plant in the ground.


nobody has heard of him and nobody will read or hear his thoughts or his music before and after he has gone.

mmm...
c

Are we the only ones to record thoughts, expressions or stories? Maybe...
they are documented in the surroundings we live in. No person saw the man,
or knew of him but the wind tuoched his face, the ground rose up to his
footsteps and the animals felt his heart beat. A life well spent, taking
only what he needed and giving back in love.
Aisha x


yum yes. well exactly and nice. i deeply know my heart would sing if it spent more time with animals.  it is one issue for me, with city dwelling, as i speak of domestic pets.  i am a bit pet hungry. again. 

i have even been thinking, as not allowed a pet in this city dwelling, of taking some fish and putting their lives in a biorb.  very nice aquarium. those tiny weeny fish ones which glow under the light and swim in showls.  not very vegan for a vegan i know. 


now im thinking again of him lined up with all the forest animals each of them smiling...
c X


I think animals make us appreciate simple things like smelling are
surroundings, taking time to get strokes and loving and to be joyful in
seeing people. Not so sure what the licking your bits or smelling other
dogs bum holes can teach us. But on the whole they bring new aspects to
our life. I just want more wild nature in my life. Building a house in the
desert, well sounds alright with big skies and endless stars but I would
miss the trees. For me they are the natural cathedrals, rising high up up
up, teaching us how to be strong, to accept the patterns of change and
offer everything in abundance. I would prefer to be the tree providing
holes for woodpeckers, insects for warblers, bark for lichen and shelter
for deer, than the man. At night when we sleep, they are our guardians,
keeping watch and breathing deep.
A xx


:)... yes they are very good at breathing.  


their needs are so very differnt...they are so strong and atrong in all weathers, so happy in water without raincoat or shelter, so too in the scorching sun without sun cream or unbrella...

~ ~ ~ 


i think the women in leonard cohens song wasnt looking to find peace or nurishment  "i hear that your building your little house deep in the dessert"  ... that idea of pushing yourself to your limits and not caring either way...maybe a metaphor for putting yourself in a harsh place and seeming to have choosen it...
 
i was just imagining that everyone had a comfort/love/energy metre gauge natrually in their arm, like the dial on a dashboard which shows the petrol level which everyone could see


and in the same way you put petrol into your car, people could feed what people needed back into them...  and easily because they could see on the gauge what was needed...it had lots of differnt levels on it, like need to receive gratitude or be heard or be smiled at or to have fun or to recieve touch or whatever ...


and everyone was invested in keeping as many people as poss 'topped up' because they knew that was how the world was most beautiful.

~  ~  ~


thank you aisha for writing with me.  i am really enjoying this writing project and have enjoyed writing with you.  and am looking forward to the next person i write with and so, like leonard cohen said, "...keeping some kind of record"
c